


Prick Your Finger (I Promise I'll Come For You)

by ellacj



Series: Don't Leave Me Alone (You Know I Never Could) [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How ironic, that Snow White might be the one to save Regina's life tonight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prick Your Finger (I Promise I'll Come For You)

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post 3x11. Canon alterations - Snow received Regina's note in her saddlebag and goes to the castle before Regina can put herself under the sleeping curse. Robin is irrelevent in every way. Zelena never shows up to taunt Regina.
> 
> UPDATE: By ((many)) requests, sequel has now been posted! (:

Snow finds Regina lying on her old bed with a needle in hand.

“I got your note,” she says, holding up the scrap of parchment she found in her saddlebag.

Regina sighs. “I was hoping you wouldn’t come here until later.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Regina repeats, voice laced with scorn. “Why _not_? After everything that’s happened, what reason is there for me not to prick myself with this?”

Snow steps forward, ignoring the warning glare Regina gives her as she does so. She sits down on the bed and takes one of Regina’s hands – the one not holding the needle – between both of hers. “I know it hurts. Believe me, I do. But the only way we’re going to get through this is together.”

Regina swallows hard. She doubts she can get through this at all, but she doesn’t tell Snow that. Not when she remembers identical smirks on a young boy and his idiot of a mother; remembers sitting at the counter in the diner daintily eating her ice cream while they have a competition to see who can wolf theirs down the fastest and pretending to be disgusted but silently rooting for her son to win.

“Please,” Snow says softly. “Put it down.”

“What do you care?” Regina snarls, suddenly defensive. “All I’ve ever done is hurt you and your family. Why do you care about me so much?”

“We’re more alike than you think, Regina. No, I’m serious!” she insists at Regina’s scoff. “Neither of us are very good at hiding from our feelings. We love people we know we shouldn’t.” She gently squeezes Regina’s hand. “Even after you sent me away, after all those attempts on my life, I still loved you, you know. You were still a mother to me. I always thought of you as one.”

“I…”

“You don’t have to say anything. But I want you to know that I still care about you; I always have. You still matter to me.”

And in that moment Regina finds it so hard to hate Snow White, the insipid fool who caused her all that pain and who she spent decades trying to kill now sitting beside her trying to save her life – and no, the irony isn’t lost on either of them. “I can’t live without them,” she says finally, her voice hoarse with resignation.

And perhaps it’s because she says _them_ instead of _him_ , but Snow’s entire body tenses oh so briefly before she softens. “You have to try.”

Regina shakes her head. She remembers monotonous days at work interrupted by the burst of light that was the town’s sheriff bursting into her office to yell at her about one thing or another. She remembers that day at the mines when everything seemed so hopeless, seemed like she had lost him forever, until that annoyingly persistent blonde rose out of that mineshaft in a seemingly angelic manor holding her son – _their son –_ so tightly in her arms Regina’s afraid of him losing oxygen for an entirely different reason; remembers brushing her aside more out of sheer habit than anything else.

Snow slowly reaches over for the needle, but Regina jerks it away. “Regina, _please_ ,” she tries again. “I’m not leaving here until you put it down.”

“Well then, I suppose we’ll be here for a while, won’t we?”

“We don’t have to.”

“Yes, just like Emma and Henry didn’t _have_ to leave,” Regina barks. It comes out more angry, more bitter than she intended and she absolutely _hates_ the way Snow’s face softens with pity at her impulsive confession.

“They’re happy.” Snow’s voice is quiet, lacking conviction enough to make Regina question whether Snow herself believes it at all. “You gave them a good life. Good memories.”

“If only I could have done the same for myself.”

Snow nods her agreement. “But that’s what love is all about. Putting someone else before yourself.”

Regina shakes her head. “Love isn’t always about sacrifice. Sometimes it’s about being so terribly selfish and just wanting everything all to yourself and realizing that someone is willing to give that to you… that’s what love is. Indulging someone’s selfish desires and having your own indulged in return.”

“Maybe it’s a balance of the two. Selfishness and selflessness.” Snow tilts her head. “A balance of light and dark. Just like everything else in this world.”

Regina snorts. “Like you actually have any darkness in you. You’re _Snow White_ , remember?”

“Take my heart out.”

“What?”

“Do it.” Snow looks Regina determinedly in the eye. “I want to show you what you showed me all those weeks ago.”

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Regina reaches into Snow’s chest and pulls out her heart. It’s soft and glowing and pink, but there’s a tiny, almost microscopic spot of blackness.

 _She killed her_ , a voice whispers in the back of Regina’s head. _She killed Cora. It’s her fault Daniel is dead and it’s her fault Cora is dead and now you’re holding her heart so just do it_.

“Look,” Snow says, pointing to the spot of black.

_Crush it._

“Nobody has a truly pure heart. Everyone’s just a balance.”

_Crush it into dust._

“Even you, Regina.”

_Squeeze until there’s nothing left but a pile of ash and the body you always wanted to see dead at your feet._

Quickly, before she can do anything else, Regina shoves Snow’s heart back into her chest and breathes a heaving sigh of relief. “You shouldn’t let me do that again,” she says breathlessly. “Next time I might not be able to control myself.”

A sort of shadow falls over Snow’s face as she realizes the meaning of her words. “Right. Of course.”

Regina turns her gaze back to the needle still in her left hand. She could still do it. It would be so simple; just paralyze Snow with magic and prick her finger. Escape the pain.

So why hasn’t she yet? Why has she sat here for the past – who knows how long it’s been – and let Snow distract her?

“I know you miss them,” Snow says softly.

Regina looks up to meet her gaze, all the animosity of the past thirty years fading in a few beats of the heart as she sees her own pain reflected in her most hated enemy’s eyes and maybe she just has to agree _we’re more alike than you think_.

“But they truly are happy. I know you wouldn’t have let them be anything else.”

“No,” Regina agrees in a low voice. “I would never.”

Snow clutches Regina’s hand again. “You feel things so deeply, Regina. I can only imagine the pain you must be feeling right now.”

Regina nods slowly. She remembers phone calls and curt text messages and her heart racing every time her phone chimes and sweaty palms just sitting and _waiting_ for a reply; she remembers _it was meant for you!_ and waiting around in a hospital room for the doctor to tell her news she’s terrified she’ll never hear and being in the supply closet with an arm pressed against her throat and a low voice demanding answers.

She remembers falling in love.

Somewhere along the line, somewhere between shouts of “He’s my son!” she found herself inexplicably obsessed with the woman who turned Storybrooke upside down; found herself wanting to solve the enigma of the blonde woman who called herself after the beautiful bird who thought it was ugly.

“You’re not the only one who had to give up her child,” Snow says.

“But you still have your idiot,” Regina retorts, though it lacks the usual bite she has in her voice when speaking to Snow White. “Mine crossed the town line that day right beside my son.”

Snow squeezes tightly to Regina’s hand and Regina finds that grip to be her anchor to reality, the one thing keeping her here when all she wants to do is go, to be anywhere but here where all she feels is pain.

“I don’t have anyone anymore.”

“You have me.”

Regina smiles a sad, broken smile, borne of years of misery followed by one day of pure joy, only to have it ripped from beneath her all over again. “You know, if someone had told me a year ago that I would be finding comfort in Snow White, I’d have incinerated them on the spot.”

Snow laughs softly. “A lot can change in a year.”

“Indeed.”

She remembers hearing about the newcomer that destroyed the Storybrooke sign and outwardly paying it nothing but disdain but secretly desperate to know more about this mysterious stranger who had somehow wandered into their town. She remembers standing on the town line one year later so glad that she had known the stranger, so glad that the stranger wasn’t much of a stranger anymore.

She remembers a kiss.

A kiss shared in those last few moments, a kiss that only one of them would ever remember and trying desperately to be okay with that. She remembers the shocked gasps from behind her as she leaned in, the death glare from the pirate when she pulled away. And she remembers a second kiss; this one not initiated by her, but by the woman in front of her. She remembers the only two kisses they ever shared and regrets not having more of them to remember.

“What was that kiss?” Snow asks finally. “On that day; what did it mean?”

It’s a question Regina’s been asked a hundred times by a hundred people since they returned to this land, but now is the first time she’s prepared to answer it. “I just had to know what it was like to kiss her,” she murmurs. “Just once. Before it was too late.”

“Did you love her?”

Regina turns her gaze from her lap to meet Snow’s wide, brown eyes. There’s no hostility there, no threats from a protective mother; just empathy and shared pain. “Yes.”

“How long?”

Regina sucks her lower lip between her teeth and bites down. “I don’t know. All I know is that when you and she went through that portal… it upset me more than it should have. I _missed_ her. I never knew what it was like to miss her before then. And now here we are again.”

“Distance makes the heart grow fond.”

“Distance makes the heart grow _weak_ ,” Regina sneers. She again shifts her piercing gaze to the needle pinched between her fingers. “My mother always told me that love is weakness. And experience has only ever proved her right.”

Snow shakes her head in Regina’s peripheral vision. “Love isn’t weakness. It’s strength. It makes you strong enough to get through anything.” Slowly, she reaches out and catches Regina’s arm; the one that’s holding the needle. “Even now. Even this. Love will get you through it.”

Regina whips her head around to meet Snow’s eyes once again. “How?” she snarls. “The only two people left in the universe that I love are _gone_. They’re in another world with no memory of me, or of you, or of any of us. How in the _hell_ is that supposed to give me _hope_?” She spits the last word with particular venom, causing Snow to jump back from where she sits.

“If you love them, then you will always find them.”

Regina tries so hard not to roll her eyes, but in the end just surrenders to the inevitable reaction. “That may be true for you and your _Charming_ , but I find that’s not always the case for me.”

Snow sighs. She moves her hand, lowers Regina’s arm just a fraction of an inch but it’s enough. It’s just enough for Regina to rethink.

_If your heart will never heal  
Prick your finger on a spinning wheel_

Her hands are trembling, but still she holds the needle at an awkward angle until her arm aches just thinking.

_Fall into a slumber deep  
One hundred years you will sleep_

“Regina?” Snow’s voice sounds far away, almost as though Regina’s underwater and there’s no one down there with her and she’s _alone_ , all alone.

_Unless upon one blessed day  
True Love appears to save the day_

She lifts the needle with a shaking hand to her finger, feeling a sharp pain as it breaks the skin there.

_With True Love’s Kiss the curse will break  
And leave disaster in its wake_

“Regina!” Snow shouts in horror, but it’s too late. She falls backward onto the bed, head making contact with the pillow just as the needle clatters to the floor. Snow shakes her shoulders but to no avail. “Regina, come back,” she pleads.

_Heed this warning, fairest one  
This curse is never truly undone._

Regina has nothing to say, but her last conscious thought before falling under the spell plays over and over in her head and it won’t stop.

_Emma. Find me. I need you._

And somewhere in another world, a blonde woman sits bolt upright in bed, suddenly remembers everything and everyone she left behind in a town that no longer exists. Through the sweat that coats her body and gasping breaths that wrack her frame, she utters one word.

“Regina.”


End file.
